Background:
I'm going to be doing the equivalent of this study (Conjugated linoleic acid supplementation reduces adipose tissue by apoptosis and develops lipodystrophy in mice) on myself.
The driving idea behind this experiment is that body weight is metabolically regulated and that effect is mediated by insulin, leptin and some other signalling molecules. When we lose weight, fat cells get smaller, but they dont die. (article) The number of fat cells you have is pretty important because we are coming to understand fat functions like a gland --- releasing regulatory hormones in addition to storing and releasing fat. This is important because when we diet, the number of fat cells doesn't strink, instead fat cells get smaller... and small fat cells stop releasing leptin which is an appetite suppressant among other effects. This makes our weight go back up after a diet.
The trick with the above study is that CLA appears to cause apoptosis - killing fat cells instead of them just shrinking. This may reset the 'set point' for body weight regulation. There is a big problem though in doing this --- instead of the fat just going away, it gets re-routed to your liver. Mice in the above study had HUGE livers - like 4x the size of controls. To avoid this side effect, i'm going to take a very high dose of CLA while fasting.
Question On Dosing:
What I'm not sure of is how to translate the mouse CLA dose to humans. In the study, CLA (a lipid) made up 2% of the mice' diet by calories. My average metabolic rate is 3500-4000+ KCal (I'm tall with lots of muscle), so for me that's 80 Calories of CLA. A 1 gram pill has 10 calories but it is 80% CLA... So 80 calories is 80/10/0.8 = 10 pills. (@ 1g of 80% CLA per pill) What I wanted to check with you folks is if there is some metabolic scaling from mice to people with CLA? - i know there usually is scaling with pharmaceuticals but am not so sure about CLA.
Experiment Details:
I'm 240 (@ roughly 17-19% bodyfat) - will be getting a body scan tom morning for an accurate measurement in the morning
That means I have ~45 lbs of fat.
I'd like to get to 8% body fat as my new set point which would be 16 lbs of fat.
This would mean i need to lose 29 lbs of fat.
To prevent lipodystrophy, i will be fasting or near fasting (@ 0-400 Cal/ Day) and with a metabolic rate of 3500 (conservatively), i will be burning 3,000 calories a day.
Since I will be working out and taking BCA's and because fasting is largely muscle sparing after 3 days, I'm hoping that my lean mass loss is limited to 5 lbs.
This means that in total i need to lose 34 lbs, and at 3200 cal / pound while burning 3000 calories / day, it should take me 36 days to hit target weight.
However after stopping the fast and supplementation, i will have fewer but empty fat cells. My body will then proceed (i expect) to refeed until I then have fewer full fat cells.
What this means is that my weight will go up potentially a good bit maybe 50% increase in fat - as my remaining cells fill back up. That would put me at 12% body fat, which is not the target.
I could then do another round to get lower, but i dont want to do that.
Instead I think I'm going to try to get to 6% bodyfat and then move back up to 8-9% as the fat cells fill back up.
This means that I need to lose another 4lbs of fat and another 1lb of lean mass. That would turn my 36 day adventure into a 42 day adventure.
This means my target weight loss is 39 lbs or getting to 6% bodyfat which ever comes first.
At that point I will have lost 6 lbs of lean mass going from 195 -> 189. And I will have lost 33 lbs of fat mass going from 45 -> 12. WIth my total weight changing from 240 to 201.
To track lipodystrophy i will have medical supervision and get ultrasounds. I'll also do extensive blood work before and after.
Ideally id like to biopsy tiny bits of fat and do apoptosis TUNEL staining to see if im getting the desired effect, but this is tricky. Any lab rats here know more about this? Who would i get to do this for me? Or would i just have to buy the kit from a lab supply company?
I'd like to make a video about it and share it with the internet if successful.
Cheers. all. If you can help with the question above about metabolic scaling -- I would be super appreciative.